Another great evening with GoodGym at Grow Baby, supporting families in need.

Led by Rachel, our team — Jana, Manasa, Jonathan, Luke and Saber — got straight to work forming a human chain, quickly moving bags upstairs and building an impressive pile by the door (with Luke keeping spirits high with marathon stories along the way!).

With that done in record time, we moved downstairs where tasks were expertly assigned:

• Shoes sorted by Manasa

• Coats and dresses organised by Jonathan

• Toys checked by Luke

• Essentials stocked by Jana

• Saber helping wherever needed

We then tackled sorting winter clothes, blankets and grow bags into storage, making great progress in just an hour. With time for one final push, the teddy bear box turned into a fun finale — with Luke and Jonathan in goal as Jana launched toys over a wall of bags!

We finished with a group selfie among the piles — tired, happy, and having achieved loads in a short time. A brilliant effort all round 👏

Over at Refugee action having run, cycled and walked over we split in to teams to sort donations.

Men’s and women’s clothing as well as new donations required sorting and categorising whilst shoes needed pairing up. As always there were a few rouge items in the wrong section that needed rehoming and a few rainbow and sparkly numbers discovered for photos.

An hour after starting John and Tom had created an incredibly neat menswear department, Emma, Anna and Ellie had got women’s wear in order, Marcus had ensured that every shoe had a partner and Adam and Claire had filtered and put away all the donations.

After few snacks (we couldn’t resist) and a group photo we said our goodbyes with the runners heading off for a lovely run along the river.

This morning in the sunshine, we got through our jobs, working together and also with help offered by passers by.

We started off by Ellie and myself being the water gathering, while doing this we had offers off help by people passing by, 1 helping to collect water and another offer of help with the wheelbarrows where the containers were full. Whilist this was done we had left Claire to toss the compost heaps in the gardens. Then we all teemed up again to brake up soil and dig some compost into it, in 3 big planter boxes that has been donated by the council.

We left satisfied after doing a great task and engaging with 3 members of the community, with their offers of help, throwing in chat about goodgym . The only downside to today was to find out that Mr Fox had got away with a full belly of chickens. Hopefully they will acquire more.

On a lovely sunny Saturday morning 3 GoodGymers arrive bright and early in Canbury Gardens to spread some mulch on the GoodGym flowerbed. Mulch to our surprise it had vanished leaving the remnants in its place. Undeterred the hour was well spent doing some other much needed tasks including dead heading the tulips and daffodils, weeding and watering. Emily fought with the weeds and brambles at the back of the bed whilst Saber made numerous trips to the river for wheelbarrows full of water to make sure every plant was well watered. Claire meanwhile gave the bed a good weed and tidy.

It was lovely to have one lady come over and say how much she enjoyed looking at the the flowerbed, especially all the tulips.

Hopefully we can get it just as colorful for the Summer.